San Francisco Chronicle Top 100 Novels of the West (23)

Modernity has promised Man many things, the most important of which
is that with God dead, we are free to jettison the archaic Judeo-Christian
morality which has held us in thrall lo these many years and can now do,
essentially, whatever we wish. This basic promise was finally and
fully embraced during the 1960's with Women's Liberation, the Sexual Revolution,
the rise of the Drug Culture, the rejection of the nuclear family, etc.,
etc., etc.. All of these different waves of social experimentation
had a one thing in common, each was premised on the idea that individual
freedom is the paramount value, more important than any responsibility
owed to our fellow men. Together they elevate the self above neighborhood,
community, society and family. They place the individual at the of
his own universe, whole and sufficient unto himself, beholden to no one,
dependent on no one.

Joan Didion's novel, Play It As It Lays, though written in 1970,
already recognized the horrific consequences of this monstrous ideology
of selfishness. The main character in the novel, Maria Wyeth, is
a thirty-one year old model turned actress. Her days are filled with
casual sex, drugs, alcohol, aimless wanderings, and meaningless conversations
with people she doesn't much like. Her marriage is falling apart.
Her four year old daughter has been institutionalized, because of some
form of chemical imbalance. Pregnant again, she gets an abortion,
an illegal one performed in a safe house in Encino. This accelerates
her slide into an emotional instability so severe that she ends up confined
to a mental hospital.

Though she mentions an inchoate longing to return to her childhood several
times, in her final monologues in the book she seems to have settled into
complete nihilism :

I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing.
The answer is 'nothing.'

And her behavior--the sex with friends, acquaintances and strangers,
the barbiturates and alcohol, the almost complete absence of emotion with
which she accepts a friend's decision to commit suicide--certainly suggests
that nothing matters. However, there is one moment in the book which
betrays a hidden truth; after an assignation with a married lover, the
following conversation ensues :

'Don't cry,' he said.

'There's no point.'

'No point in what.'

'No point in our doing any of those things.'

He looked at her for a long while. 'Later,'
he said then.

'I'm sorry.'

'It's all right.'

On the drive back they told each other that it had
been the wrong time, the wrong place, that it was
bad because he had lied to arrange it, that it would
be all right another time, idyllic later. He
mentioned the strain he had been under, he mentioned
the preview had gone badly. She mentioned
that she was getting the curse. They mentioned
Kate, Carter, Felicia, the weather, Oxnard, his
dislike of motel rooms, her fear of subterfuge.
They mentioned everything but one thing: that she
had left the point in a bedroom in Encino.

Significantly, this comes in a portion of the book that is not told
in Maria's first person voice. It would seem to be the author's judgment
upon Maria and her cohorts. The freedom they have bought into has
brought them entirely empty and miserable lives, while leaving them incapable
of understanding that certain things in life actually do mean something.
Maria's life had a point, the life that she was carrying and towards which
she had a responsibility. It was the abdication of this burden, the
failure to accept responsibility for another being, which has rendered
her life finally meaningless.

This is a bleak and devastating look at a culture where people have
become completely atomized, heedless of anyone beyond themselves and, therefore,
so soulless that there's not much to like about themselves. In fact,
none of the characters are likable and, other than that brief authorial
comment, there's not much of a redeeming vision to be found. I kind
of admired the book's very savagery, but it was ultimately just so dark
and hopeless that it was hard to enjoy.